For Shaw Internet customers, it used to be pretty straight-forward: for a given smartphone, authenticate yourself once and you automatically were connected to any ShawOpen Wi-Fi Hotspot you encountered in your travels.

Then, in the last month or two, ShawGo appeared, sometimes replacing an existing ShawOpen hot spot, but, more often than not, appearing alongside. In the latter case, it paid to check both, as there were usually huge Link Speed differences.

Now, in the last couple of days, Shaw PassPoint has appeared in a couple of locations I've visited. Even if you are authenticated to ShawOpen/ShawGo (one authentication covered both), you are not automatically connected to Shaw PassPoint. When you click on PassPoint, you get several choices of connections, and no clear way to just say: "I'm already authenticated to ShawOpen/ShawGo, so just connect me already".

Finally solved this puzzle. Shaw-owned Freedom Mobile's customers who install and open the Freedom Wi-Fi app, are connecting to Shaw Passpoint, which gives them everything that ShawOpen provides, and more. Phone calls can be made without incurring cellular charges, for example.

Shaw Internet customers can use ShawOpen on any wi-fi device by registering its Mac Address.

Freedom Mobile customers can use Shaw Passpoint through the Freedom Wi-Fi app.

I believe that anyone can use ShawGo.

Shaw provides a fourth "type" of Wi-Fi hot spot to some Cities, again free for anyone to use. Edmonton calls theirs Open City Wi-Fi.